The Future of Publishing: Authors, Writers, Publishers, and Booksellers Chat

The other day in my last LitBits post I mentioned that a bunch of us in the book world would be chatting about the future of publishing. James Patrick Bowler, a student in the journalism program at Loyalist College here in Belleville invited authors Tish Cohen, Robin Spano, John Degen, and Johnny Pigeau, as well as Lisa Shedden, a Chapters bookseller, Marie Clausén, managing editor and production director at the University of Ottawa Press, and me, freelance copyeditor, bookseller, and book blogger, to participate.

Here is the live-to-chat transcript (my apologies; I can’t seem to embed it). It’s lighthearted and funny and also serious and it gets a bit off track now and then. But it’s stimulating and interesting as well. It was hard to follow because the comments were flying fast, and the hour was far too short a time, really, to cover such a topic with so many people. Later, when I went back to read it, there was much more I wish I’d said. But that will likely come out here and there on this blog over time.

Awesome. Hey Steph, how do I subscribe to your blog so that new entries magically appear in my inbox? (I currently rely on Facebook & Twitter to find new posts – and sometimes my mom reposts your articles on her Facebook page.)

I go back and forth – sometimes blurbs (or rather, who blurbed) will sell me, but when it’s vague, overused language, definitely not. After working in publishing, too, I can speak to the emphasis put on the blurb. And though I never saw it happen at my company, I know there are publishers who push for blurbs in a matter of mere days; authors on tour and reviewers can’t generally be expected to finish a book in a day or two, so it makes one question how many blurbers have actually read the entire book they are blurbing, doesn’t it?